glorification isn't endorsement (but please glorify responsibly)

A King must be confident. The contract between a King and his Pieces is that they trust him utterly, absolutely, and that he be worthy of that trust, and give them no cause not to trust him. The truth is, now, in the moment of truth, he is not sure. There is nothing more important than Checkmate. This battle is his purpose, his entire existence, and this is the first move of it -

A King must be confident.

Yes.

The White King speaks: "e4." This is his decision, and it shall be so.

The pawns do not understand algebraic chess notation!

Heya, yieldsfalsehoodwhenquined and/or karcatgirl-vantas and/or rotifer here! For a variety of stupid reasons I cannot get into my kcgv account right now, but I can get into this account. So I will be using this account to plug my silly new creative project, THE CHESSIAD. I liked Problem Sleuth and I vaguely understand the basic rules of chess, and I've decided to make that your problem. Come join me in having very silly ideas and then taking them more seriously than they deserve.

I can get into kcgv now. Read The Chessiad.

#that is the most doesn't know what's going on looking dog in the world

Very slow day today, so I decided to finally watch The Birth of A Nation (at 1.25 speed, which I will not apologize for lmao). Can confirm: extremely racist

this is a dril tweet

Okay. Say you ask a small child to draw you a house, and they come up with something like this:

For the purposes of this analogy the child is shit at colouring in, because I only wanted to give the general idea.

So, we can all agree that the child who draws a house probably isn't trying to communicate anything in particular other than “look at this cool house I drew”, right?

Cool.

So… Why is it seemingly in the middle of nowhere, when most children live in houses with neighbours?

Why is the main body a square and the roof a solid triangle when that doesn't look like any house that has ever been built anywhere?

Why does it have a wood-burning stove with smoke actively coming out of the chimney, even though the sun indicates warm weather?

Why is the sun smiling? Why is it yellow?

Answer: because the child has seen picture books, and films, and the drawings of other children, and has on some level absorbed that this is what a house is meant to look like.

Face to face, the child almost certainly wouldn't know where to begin communicating “yellow is a colour culturally associated with happiness and warmth, and two dots accompanied by a curved line symbolically represent a smiling human face, so I have combined these attributes with the sun to convey that it is a very warm and pleasant day”.

Or “historically most houses in my country used fire for heat and cooking, and even though this is no longer the case for the majority of households, most media portrayals of houses are inspired by other, older, media portrayals and therefore include the chimney. I have chosen to follow this trend.”

Or even, “I have poor motor control because of my age, and large, 2 dimensional shapes are easier to draw than anything involving detail and perspective”.

Yet this is all information that you can pick up from detailed study of the house drawing.

Ultimately, it's not about what the writer intended. That's what the whole death of the author thing means.

If you think of literature like as a conversation, then think of all the analysis stuff that your English teacher keeps trying to get you to look at as like body language. It's the stuff that the other person doesn't even necessarily mean to communicate, but that can tell you a hell of a lot about what they mean.

Also, a poem written by a poet who got high is still a poem written by a poet.

People love to say dismissive bullshit like, "oh, that's just the drugs talking" but actually, drugs can't fucking talk! It is always the human being doing the talking regardless of how intoxicated they are. The drugs are not creating the poetry. The poet's mind is creating the poetry. A person doesn't stop being a person just because they took something.

Gonna nitpick a wording:

"Yet this is all information that you can pick up from detailed study of the house drawing."

Mmmmm no, these are all interpretations you can draw out of it, and parallels and potentials that you can gather from detailed study of the house drawing.

It isn't knowledge, and this is where "death of the author" gets used in a shitty way: if the author is dead, the author is really dead, and you get to stop speculating on whether or not that's the reason that the child drew the house like that.

You don't know. The house might actually be a very specific portrait of a house that they saw, or even a reproduction of a piece of art they saw, which they drew purely because they wanted to reproduce the art or the image. If the author is dead you cannot know that, and you must accept that it is unknown.

What you can do is note what you see in the piece; you can engage with the fact that it exists within a tradition of art that is all the things you say, and that thus one can interpret it in these ways as well, and that it exists within this tradition which is obviously a tradition because of all these other factors.

You don't get (you really, really don't get) to decide you know what the author meant really, and then claim that this interpretation stands up against anything that the author says, and then say that what the author says doesn't matter because the author is dead.

If the author is dead, they are dead. Their reasons for creating are no longer part of the conversation; only the work as it exists and as you relate to it are relevant.

Now you can argue that there are hidden influences on an author without arguing that the author is dead; however at that point you do also have to take into account what the author actually says, because now the author is not dead. You may not accept or believe what the author says, but if the author is dead then nothing about the author's inspiration or background or anything else actually matters or can be referred to; and if all of that can be referred to, then the author is not dead, and their input matters.

You don't get to silence the artist and then use your understanding of the art to dictate to the artist (and the world) who they are.

i am going to take a quick break from following the news to watch the classic animated comedy, “The Simpsons”

ok

a talking point i often see when defending the consumption of dark content is that it’s a coping mechanism for those with trauma which is very valid and true but i also want to make this abundantly clear: you can like dark content for no reason. you can enjoy fucked up shit in fiction because it’s enjoyable and entertaining. trauma is not required as a ticket for entry. enjoy your dark content bc it’s fun and sexy and don’t let anyone take that away from you

feels nice just to be wanted. even if it is for murder

Good news! Scientists have discovered that the Omelas child's chains are made of an ontologically unbreakable material so there's nothing anyone could do to free her even if they wanted to so there's no actual moral dilemma

Funny that was your first thought whereas i thought "surely we can make the hole a lot more comfortable"

you lack my resolve

Story were a man in the ensemble cast gets involuntarily transformed into a cute woman near the beginning, and turned back at the end, at which time it is also revealed that he's been a transgender man all along, retroactively making all the fanworks made during the story's publication that depicted him accepting his girl form super transphobic.

this is hands down the funniest review like. ever

On 2 separate occasions in this 20 second video I thought this cat was gonna be absolutely COOKED

They fucming macrowabed him?!?!

"space is too big; I don't like how that looks, so I drew it smaller" sounds like a post I would make, but it also describes the philosophy behind most diagrams of the solar system.

(original ask, for context)

this poly shit is crazyyyy you can tease your girlfriend for having a crush on someone